


going down to nowhere

by 100indecisions



Series: Loki fic [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, edging in a Steve/Loki direction but it's mostly gen, takes place after Thor 2 and Cap 2, will add more tags as they become relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2018-11-28 20:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11425926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/100indecisions/pseuds/100indecisions
Summary: Things Steve was not expecting (aside from "literally everything about this situation") on his first visit to Asgard: getting roped into a temporary job as Odin's errand boy, seeing an immensely powerful and ancient alien about an immensely powerful and ancient artifact, and touring said alien's bizarre collection of things and beings from across the galaxy.Things he really,reallywasn't expecting: finding Thor's not-actually-dead-after-all brother in a museum case as part of the collection. (The fact that this discovery results in various kinds of trouble is pretty much par for the course at this point, though.)[This fic was originally started for MCU AU Fest and recently finished for Marvel Big Bang.]





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> I signed up for MCU AU Fest this year because I've enjoyed it before, and this time I developed an idea that didn't quite follow any of my recipient's prompts but did mash together elements of several of them, and I liked it. But then life happened, as it tends to do, and I realized there was no way I could finish the story I wanted to tell in time, so I defaulted. I still wanted to post _something_ in time for reveals, though, as an additional treat for my former recipient, and that was this: the first chapter of a fic I eventually continued for Marvel Big Bang. I'll repost the rest of it in chapters over the next few weeks or so.
> 
> The title was originally "untimely make your way" until I changed it because I found [a Thea Gilmore song](http://www.songlyrics.com/thea-gilmore/down-to-nowhere-lyrics/) that seemed a lot more relevant.

Loki wakes cold and alone, windblown sand stinging his face, and for long moments he can only lie still in the dirt of Svartalfheim as he struggles to understand.

He hurts. Everything hurts, the pain radiating outward from his chest; that much is certain. He should be dead; he is certain of that as well, but instead his body throbs in time with his heartbeat and pain spiders across his chest with each breath.

It takes three failed attempts to gain his feet without collapsing again, and even then the world seems to shudder beneath him as if it wants to buck him off. He staggers across the plain, the wound’s edges grinding together with every step, no destination in mind save _away_ , _not here_ and a vague desire not to stay out in the open.

There is a small cave some distance ahead of him and he heads that way without conscious decision. Partway there, his senses brush up against _something_ , something he should recognize immediately but doesn’t because he is too damn weak. He steps wrong and stumbles badly, jarring his insides and staying on his feet through sheer stubborn willpower, and for a long moment all he can do is stand there on the desolate plain, swaying a little, trying to remember how to breathe—how to reach out with his _seidr_ , which ordinarily is as simple as breathing, so perhaps it is appropriate that he is struggling with both. Finally he wraps one arm around his ribs (as if that will do anything to hold himself together) and forces himself onward.

A thin place. That is what his instincts identified in this cave, even if his mind took its own time catching up: a gap in reality, a path between realms, through which he can step and emerge…elsewhere. It is fixed, he thinks as he grows slowly closer, not a pathway he can direct but one that will lead to a single destination only, and with his powers at such a low ebb he cannot determine where. He almost hopes for Midgard; many paths lead there, and with the Convergence clearly finished, it would at least be safer than most other realms.

He ducks to enter the cave and nearly loses his balance again, but this time he has a wall of rock for support and he leans on it heavily as he stumbles forward. To say it is a cave is perhaps overly generous, because it is no larger than his cell in Asgard’s dungeons, but he can feel the thin spot more strongly now on the far wall, and that is all that matters. He sets one hand against it, probing around its edges and trying to ignore the fresh pulse of pain near his heart.

He has the strength to open this one pathway, at least. He is…almost certain of that. And though he can think of a number of places that would make his situation significantly, objectively worse, he is sick to death of Svartalfheim and all it contains, and so he takes as deep a breath as he can and opens the pathway.

It should be a simple matter of stepping from one realm to the next, but instead he pitches forward as if he’s been shoved, and the gateway spits him out on the other side to land sprawling. He sees stars, first, _galaxies_ , and for a moment he freezes in mindless terror, thinking _Sanctuary_ and _Thanos_ and _please I can’t do this again I can’t_ —

Other details slowly push through the terror—an odd ceiling of some kind, and artificial lights. Colorful ones. The nearest is pink and green, flashing on and off in a dizzying pattern that gradually resolves into the word _CHEAP_. Loki blinks at it and finally the clues come together: this is not Sanctuary but Knowhere, which is potentially just as bad. Thanos has agents everywhere, after all, and Loki is easily recognized. But perhaps he can find somewhere to hide while he heals and his _seidr_ rebuilds, and then…he does not know what he will do.

Well, he will think of something, when he is again capable of thinking and his vision isn’t graying out at the edges. For now, getting out of this alley is a start. He forces himself to his knees and has to stop, his head spinning and his chest burning as he gasps for breath. He was barely able to walk on Svartalfheim, and the single journey here seems to have sapped what little remained of his strength, with the dregs of his _seidr_ siphoned off merely to keep him alive.

It would make things considerably simpler if his body and his instincts would just _stop_ and let him rest at last, before anything else can ruin the tiny spot of warmth that is the memory of Thor holding him as he died, but if he has to survive, he is not going to lie here waiting for fate to catch up with him. Grimly he plants both hands on the ground to shove himself upright—

—and freezes, his mind finally registering blue skin and black fingernails. It seems his body is in such extremity that it cannot even hold the change to his accustomed form—dying has stripped away even this last falsehood. Loki reaches frantically for the _seidr_ to change back, and the hole in his chest blazes with agony as if the Kursed is impaling him all over again. He curls forward, gasping emptily, Knowhere blurring and smearing as his vision starts to tunnel.

When he blinks again he is lying on his side, his whole body throbbing, and through the roaring in his ears he hears footsteps, coming closer. Hands grip his upper arms and pull, and for a moment he stares up into shapeless, unfamiliar faces—and then they start to drag him and his consciousness spirals away.

More hands. Movement. Artificial light, closer and sharper—indoors, then, with no sense of how he got here. Loki forces his eyes open and sees light, metal, nothing he recognizes.

“Oh my,” an unfamiliar voice says, “this is indeed a marvelous specimen. Bring it here—” And then a face topped with white hair swims into view and Loki recognizes the Collector, because apparently his life is an enormous cosmic joke. He struggles to sit up, move, _anything_ , but his body is heavy and sluggish, and it refuses to respond.

The Collector smiles at him and strokes one (burning, freezing) hand along his jaw. “Little Jotun,” he says, “fallen prince of Asgard, would-be conqueror of Terra—you will make a fine addition to my living museum.”

“No,” Loki says, “ _no_ —”

Something pierces his spine and his mind is forced inward, down and down and down—he is aware of flashes, cold metal under his knees, a cage, there whenever his consciousness nears the surface of reality, but he cannot reach it no matter how desperately he claws for purchase and so instead—

He is falling, trapped within his own mind and falling again, on and on and on, freezing and burning and fragmenting in the howling silence of the Void; he is chained in Sanctuary with the Titan’s creatures tearing apart his body and the scepter tearing apart his mind, he is watching his hand turn blue as the world tumbles away from him, he is watching Thor and Frigga die while he is helpless to stop it, is hanging once more over the abyss, is bleeding and dying and falling and falling and it

never

 _ends_ —


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh...long time no see? Here's the thing, I _did_ technically finish this fic for Marvel Big Bang in mid-November but because I am often very bad at things like deadlines and planning, I ended up writing a lot of it in an absolute flaming panic the weekend it was due, so by the time I was done I was sick of it and convinced that the whole thing sucked, and basically the last thing I wanted to do was look at it again for at _least_ a few weeks. 
> 
> Obviously, it's been much longer than a few weeks. I kept not getting back to it because I was positive most of it was awful and I knew it needed a ton of editing, and even after [Lena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lena7142/pseuds/Lena7142) kindly assured me it was not irredeemably awful, I still kept not getting back to it because, again, I knew it needed a ton of editing. And in fact it still does! But it's March 31 and I don't want to break my streak of posting at least one new thing a month, and I don't have anything else finished, so...here's a short new chapter that didn't need much editing because it's mostly just getting Steve into the story.

As Steve climbs out of a tiny Asgardian spaceship into one of Knowhere’s landing bays he wonders, not for the first time, what the hell he’s doing with his life.

Probably he should’ve started wondering that before he ever took the serum, but no, he figured it was worth it if he could help people. And then Schmidt peeled off his own face and honestly, that really should have been a clue that Steve Rogers, the nobody from Brooklyn, just wasn’t going to have anything resembling a normal life anymore.

He’s pretty good at taking bizarre events in stride, all things considered. Sleeping in the ice for decades and waking up to a completely new world, fighting off an alien invasion in Manhattan, jumping out of the Triskelion and going on the run because his own government suddenly wanted to murder him—he’s rolled with all of it, more or less. But visiting a lawless spaceport built inside a giant floating skull so he can make sure an ancient alien obsessed with collecting things is taking good care of yet another reality-warping artifact that really shouldn’t exist—well, this is a new one, and he’s pretty sure he can’t even begin to make contingency plans for all the ways things could go sideways, considering how _very_ far out of his wheelhouse this is.

“You will be fine,” Thor told him before he left, with an obviously sincere but ineffective attempt at a reassuring smile. “Knowhere is a rough place, true, but you have survived much worse.”

Steve smiled back and didn’t point out that all those worse things at least happened on Earth, in relatively familiar territory, and didn’t involve space travel or interplanetary (inter-Realm? Possibly intergalactic; he’s a little fuzzy on some of the details) politics. He appreciated the effort, anyway, and he was well aware that Thor was stuck with this even more than Steve was.

That’s why he’s here in the first place, of course, for Thor and the team, although Knowhere is still a little more than he expected when he agreed to visit Asgard with Thor. Even “visit” isn’t quite accurate, given the many complicated parts of the situation.

They’d all expected Thor to show up again soon, after he was spotted saving the world in London, and then a bit later when the Avengers started to drift back together in the aftermath of HYDRA’s destruction. But there were no more sightings during the months in between, Dr. Foster hadn’t seen him when Tony thought to ask her, and nobody loved the idea of trying to recover Loki’s scepter from HYDRA remnants without Thor, who might at least have some idea how to contain the thing. A month after SHIELD’s downfall, Thor appeared on the roof of Avengers Tower, looking tired and solemn. He told the Avengers (and Dr. Foster, who Skyped in looking both pissed and worried) that he’d asked for Odin’s permission to return to Earth so he could continue fighting with the Avengers and visiting Jane, which Odin flatly refused, seeming incredulous that his heir would want to waste more time with mortals in the first place. This was the first time in months that he’d allowed Thor to leave Asgard for anything except fighting on the fringes of Asgard’s territory on other planets, partly as punishment because Thor defied him when he saved everyone from Malekith. (“Hang on,” Tony said, “your dad put you in _space timeout_ because he didn’t like how you defeated Krampus and his workshop of evil elves?”) He wanted to rejoin the Avengers, especially after Heimdall told him the others were trying to track down Loki’s scepter, but the chance of Odin allowing that seemed unlikely in the extreme.

Returning with him to Asgard to try talking Odin around was actually Steve’s idea in the first place, and he still isn’t sure whether he regrets it. Everyone else agreed he was the best candidate for what was effectively an Avengers ambassador, because Asgard would respect him as a warrior, and although no one actually said as much to Thor, there was some general concern that Asgard might start taking a little too much proprietary interest in Earth again unless they could demonstrate that they deserved respect on their own merits.

So Thor went back to Asgard to discuss the idea with Odin, because nobody thought showing up unannounced would be a good start for making nice with a very old and powerful Norse god. He came back the next day, and then Steve got to experience the idea of a nearly omniscient gatekeeper, travel by Bifrost, and his first visit to another planet all at once, which was overwhelming but honestly nowhere near as much as it was to wake up 70 years in the future.

Asgard itself is impressive, of course; the throne room alone probably contains more gold than all of Earth, and Steve’s never seen anything quite as awe-inspiring as the stars and galaxies visible from the Bifrost, with the bridge gleaming below and impossible waterfalls pouring out into the vacuum of space. Odin is even more intimidating than Thor made him sound, and although Steve thinks he struck a pretty good balance between appropriate deference and the kind of firmness that demands respect in return, he’s also pretty sure Odin isn’t really taking him seriously.

He’s been there for a week and a half, now; he’s gone to half a dozen feasts, helped out with ongoing repair efforts from Malekith’s attack, sparred with Thor and his friends, discovered that Asgardian alcohol actually does affect him, and enjoyed getting to know Thor better, but he’s made no apparent progress with Odin, who’s mostly ignored Steve since he arrived and has definitely ignored his request for a private audience. So when Odin called Steve in to suggest that he make himself useful by running an errand to Knowhere because none of the few Asgardians trusted with knowledge of the Aether’s whereabouts were available, Steve could have politely refused, and in the process probably wrecked any chance he had of regaining Thor’s help to get the scepter away from HYDRA, let alone getting Asgard to consider treating humans like equals.

It’s a fairly simple mission, on paper: when Thor first brought the Aether to Asgard, Heimdall immediately instructed Sif and Volstagg to bring it to the Collector because keeping it near the Tesseract was dangerous. Odin hadn’t approved the decision and still didn’t like it, but he recognized Heimdall’s point enough to leave the Aether on Knowhere. Now that things have more or less returned to normal after Malekith’s attack, he wants to make sure the Aether is being safely contained, and the most secure way to do so is to physically send someone with a checklist (and, Steve suspects, the implication that Asgard will demand the Aether back if Odin isn’t satisfied). Getting to Knowhere involves a tiny spaceship and a couple wormhole jumps rather than more Bifrost travel, but in theory the ship’s onboard navigation will take care of everything that’s more complicated than piloting a quinjet. All Steve has to do is visit the Collector’s museum, hand off the message, and wait long enough for the Collector to go over it and confirm he’s following all of Asgard’s containment guidelines. Start to finish, the whole trip shouldn’t take more than a day at the outside. All told, it sounds so straightforward that Steve, who hasn’t considered himself very superstitious in a very long time, is almost positive that something has to go wrong (and he isn’t ruling out the possibility that Odin has ulterior motives for sending him, although he puts that relatively far down his list of concerns).

So far, at least, everything has in fact gone without a hitch. The ship—more of a pod, really—is designed to hold only one person, and being sealed inside triggered a jolt of claustrophobia that immediately morphed into morbid images of what would happen to him if the thing broke down or sprang a leak in deep space. He would freeze again, but this time no one would find him, he would just drift forever through the emptiness, and he had to clamp down _hard_ on that thought if he wanted to keep his head on straight. Takeoff from Asgard and landing on Knowhere demanded his participation and attention, fortunately, and the time in between was short enough that he could mostly keep his mind off the vacuum just outside the pod’s thin walls. As travel arrangements go, he’s certainly had more uncomfortable trips.

Knowhere itself, on the other hand, is…not much like anywhere he’s ever visited, Thor’s attempted pep talk aside. It has the look of a red-light district, a seedy truck stop, a dockyard, and a high-tech coal mine somehow all rolled into one place, and every street bounded by something other than a drop into nothingness manages to feel like a back alley. Buildings stretch overhead, built into the inside of the skull, and neon lights from bars and grubby shopfronts bathe the whole place in multicolored artificial daylight. It’s the sort of place he’d love to sketch, actually, but maybe from memory later, because all the inhabitants look like they’re carrying a minimum of three deadly weapons each and most of them would respond to someone not paying attention by jumping them almost on instinct. On the plus side, plenty of other people there look more or less human, so his species doesn’t make him stand out, and even without the Asgardian cloak Thor gave him, his uniform wouldn’t be too bad. It’s still the sort of place where he makes sure he looks like he knows exactly where he’s going and makes sure not to get caught staring at anything (or anyone).

Steve reaches the Collector’s museum without incident. There’s a screen by the door that probably has a fancier name than “intercom,” but he doesn’t know what that might be and it seems to serve the exact same function, so intercom it is. He taps the most prominent button and the screen lights up with a message: PLEASE ANNOUNCE YOURSELF. Feeling a little foolish, Steve says, “This is…Captain America. Steve Rogers. I’m here with a message from Asgard. The Collector’s expecting me.” He sure hopes so, anyway.

A pause, and the door slides silently open, allowing him into what he supposes must be the lobby, then shuts after him. The woman who greets him is bright pink but otherwise pretty human-looking, which comes as a relief; Steve is perfectly capable of being polite to anyone, no matter how alien, but not being able to read nonhuman facial expressions would put him at a disadvantage right off.

“Captain America?” she says with a stiffly professional smile. “The Collector will see you now. If you’ll just follow me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having posted this, I would really like to keep posting new chapters about once a week, but I'm not kidding when I say this needs a lot of editing, and I'm often busy with other projects, so...I'm just not going to promise anything. "I'll try to get back to it soon" is pretty much the best I can do.


End file.
